Fetterear Palace

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Fetterear House (The palace no longer stands!)

Fetterear Bishop's Palace was one of the palaces of the medieval bishops of Aberdeen . It was near the village of Kemnay in the Scottish county of Aberdeenshire . Later a tower house and the country house Fetterear House were built on part of the site .

The parish of Fettetear and the location of the Episcopal Palace

In the Middle Ages, the bishop's palace in Fetternear was in its own parish. Late 16th century this separate community was together with the community Logie Durno to Chapel of Garioch incorporated. Dedicated to St. Ninian , the parish church of Fetternear was located on the north bank of the River Don , about 1.6 km from the Bishops Palace.

The palace itself was on the hillside above the Marshes Burn near its confluence with the River Don across from Kemnay. It is thought that the part of the name “Fetter-” is derived from the Scottish Gaelic “fetter” (or “fother”, “fodder”, “fether”). Such toponyms usually refer to the location of the place on terraced land. The name part “-near”, it is believed, is not an element of the place name.

Fetterear in documented sources

The lands of Fetterear belonged to the Church at least since the 12th century. However, there are only a few documents that refer to the bishop's palace, even if the name Fetterear (in different spellings) is mentioned in medieval charters. In 1157 Pope Hadrian IV confirmed that the house and lands belonged to Edward, Bishop of Aberdeen . In 1242 King Alexander II referred to the lands of Fetterear and Brass (today the Forest of Birse ) as "free forests" or, in other words, hunting grounds. He loaned it to Ralph, Bishop of Aberdeen .

A tradition by Hector Boece from 1522 mentions Bishop Alexander de Kininmund I , who is said to have spent Easter in Old Aberdeen , summer in Fetternear, autumn in Old Rayne and Christmas in Mortlach . According to Boece, Bishop Alexander made these pastoral visitations “to educate his flock and correct their mistakes,” and he had residences built in these four places to perform these duties. Boece said Bishop Alexander had the palaces in Aberdeen and Fettetear completed despite the confusion caused by the first Scottish War of Independence against England . Given that previous charters mention the existence of a house in Fetternear, Bishop Alexander must have been responsible for rebuilding the palace.

The Scottish Episcopal Palaces Project - Fetterear

In an architectural history of the modern country house in Fetternear, H. Gordon Slade mentioned that very little of the bishop's palace remained above ground. He thought that the “foundations or lower walls” might have come from an L-shaped tower . Slade's article mainly focuses on the post-Reformation architectural history of the Fetterear House and its connections with the Leslies of Balquhain, the family who received the property after the Reformation.

Since the Bishop's Palace in Fetternear had aroused very little scientific interest until then, the late Nicholas Bogdan of the Scottish Castles Survey and Penelope Dransart of the University of Wales, Lampeter , founded the Scottish Episcopal Palaces Project (SEPP) in 1995 . The aim of the project is to study the architectural evolution of Scottish bishops' palaces as residences designed to facilitate pastoral visitations throughout the diocese. So far, the project has focused on the Fetternear site in the medieval diocese of Aberdeen and the Kinnedar site in the diocese of Moray .

The excavations carried out by SEPP at Fetternear have confirmed that the visible remains of the foundations Slade found were heavily altered at the end of the 19th century at the instigation of one of the lairds of the Leslie family of Balquhain and Fetternear. These changes were made after the excavation of those parts of the bishop's palace that lie under the lawn in front of the country house. William Kelly , the Aberdeen architect , said he saw cut stones from the excavation in the first decade of the 20th century and emphasized its beautiful workmanship.

The work of SEPP showed that the medieval bishop's palace was largely surrounded by a moat . Most likely the earliest palace was built of wood on a platform enclosed by this moat, from where the water flowed through a moat to the "Marshes Burn". During an excavation in 2006, evidence of an oak palisade was found on the inside of the moat that enclosed the palace buildings. The palace was accessed from the southeast via a wooden trestle bridge , the single slab of which was excavated in 2009.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ St Martin & St Ninian's Church . Whithorn. Retrieved July 14, 2017.
  2. ^ WM Alexander: The Place Names of Aberdeenshire . Third Spalding Club, 1952. p. 276.
  3. ^ WJ Watson: The Celtic placenames of Scotland . Edinburgh: Birlinn, Edinburgh 1986 (1926).
  4. ↑ Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis . Volume IS 6.
  5. ↑ Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis . Volume IS 15.
  6. ^ JM Gilbert: Hunting and hunting reserves in medieval Scotland . John Donald, Edinburgh 1979. p. 352.
  7. ^ H. Boece, J. Moir (translator and editor): Hectoris Boetii murthlacensium et aberdonensium episcoporum vitae . The New Spalding Club, Aberdeen 1894. pp. 18-19.
  8. ^ H. Boece, J. Moir (translator and editor): Hectoris Boetii murthlacensium et aberdonensium episcoporum vitae . The New Spalding Club, Aberdeen 1894. p. 19.
  9. ^ HG Slade: The House of Fetternear: a History and a Description in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland . CIII. 1970-1971. Pp. 178-191.
  10. ↑ Nicholas Bogdan . In: The Guardian . August 28, 2002. Retrieved July 17, 2017.
  11. ^ Scottish Episcopal Palaces Project website. ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk
  12. ↑ P. Dransart, NQ Bogdan: The material culture of recusancy at Fetterear: kin and religion in post-Reformation Scotland in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland . Issue 134. 2004. pp. 457-470.
  13. ↑ P. Dransart: Prospect and excavation of moated sites: Scottish earthwork castles and house societies in the late twelfth to fourteenth centuries in Château Gaillard . Issue 23, 2008. pp. 115-128.
  14. ↑ P. Dransart: P 2001 Two shrine fragments from Kinneddar, Moray in M. Redknap, N. Edwards, S. Youngs, A. Lane, J. Knight: (Editor): Pattern and Purpose in Insular Art: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Insular Art . Oxbow, Oxford 2001. pp. 233-240.
  15. ↑ P. Dransart: Saints, stones and shrines: the cults of Sts Moluag and Gerardine in Pictland in J. Cartwright (Editor): Celtic hagiography and Saints' Cults . University of Wales Press, Cardiff 2003. pp. 232-248.
  16. ↑ Web site Fetter Near and the Scottish Episcopal Palaces Project. ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk
  17. ^ W. Kelly: St Machar's Cathedral in Transactions of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, Volume IV. 1910. pp. 169-189.
  18. ↑ P. Dransart: The Big Dig: Fat Near in British Archeology . September / October 2009. pp. 16-19.
  19. ↑ P. Dransart, J. Trigg (Editor): The Bishop's Palace Fettetear . Scottish Episcopal Palaces Project, Lampeter 2008.
  20. ↑ P. Dransart: Bridging the past and the present in Leopard Magazine . Issue 365. 2010. pp. 26-30.

Web links

Commons : Fettetear Palace  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 57 ° 14 ′ 37.3 "  N , 2 ° 27 ′ 35.6"  W.